


the tabernacle reconstructed

by staarked



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Mentions of Alina/Nikolai, One-Shot, Romance, Ruin and Rising Spoilers, Set sometime in future, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 06:09:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5486513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staarked/pseuds/staarked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a man with the weight of a kingdom in place of the boy he used to be and the man that he is can almost kill her for reminding him, reducing him, into being the boy he used to be. —Nikolai, Zoya and an empire falling, or building, maybe building.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the tabernacle reconstructed

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers be here, beware. Post- Ruin and Rising. Future fic, sort of.

_“Let’s admit, without apology,  
what we do to each other.”_

_—_

 

 **01.**  
  
There are times when he hates her, just mere lapses where she attempts to assert her opinion a tad too loudly than the circumstances strictly demand, moments where her gaze slips to his gloved hands with something akin to recognizance, minutes where he is able to map the colour on her cheeks as some courtly noble fixes her with things as fleeting as attention.  
  
“Pathetic.’” He announces because he can, he’s the king of Ravka, these days he can let his words loose without being at the slightest risk of losing an eye.  
  
She turns away momentarily, from sizing down the noble who had caught her eye, and vice-versa, to spare him a derisive snort. “Your machinations to kill my libido?” she steps forward and away from him, there has always been something about girls and walking away that makes him want to give chase, “I agree.”  
  
_(This is how it begins—)_

 

 

 **02.**  
  
There are times when he thinks he wants to kill her, it takes the form of staggering epiphanies that are more glaring than the sight of a crooked dome that a girl with white hair had split a lifetime ago. He still looks for her when he looks at the scars lining up his hand, but no one has to know. Now, there is a man with the weight of a kingdom in place of the boy he used to be and the man that he is can almost kill her for reminding him, reducing him, into being the boy he used to be.  
  
“We can’t attempt siege starvation, it’s not the course of action suitable for the army, it hasn’t been attempted before, moi tsar, you’d know if...”  
  
“I know enough, I have served in armies for a duration _longer_ than you have been _recruited_ a captain,…”  
  
“Fjerda would march against Ravka, Grisha won’t stand for your plan…”  
  
“They won’t go against their tsar…”  
  
“Then I will if your plan is a failure if it disturbs the peace of Ravka…”  
  
“Careful, what you suggest sounds terribly like treason…”  
  
“What you suggest sounds terribly like a dictatorship, you don’t own Grisha…”  
  
In the right light, she looks like she can lunge for his throat any possibly moment, it is improbable not impossible. He has half a mind to return the intent, crowd in and steal the resistance out of her, his charm is nothing more than a crumbling façade around her, but it’s the other half that he has more trouble besting, those maddening spans where he wants to do nothing more than pull her close and kiss her. Of course, it is written backwards through time as need often is: _there are times when he thinks he wants to kill_ her.

 

 

 **03.**  
  
There are times when he is jealous. More than he has a right to be. Loose snippets where he notices some royal prick looking in her direction a bit longer than necessary, where he sees the smile on her face branching too wide, where he notes the way her hair seem tousled on particular mornings.  
  
“Who is the unlucky chap to tumble into your bed this time?” He asks when he catches her in the hallway, the weight of his need against the twinge behind his eyes. Nothing more, nothing less.  
  
She bats her impossibly blue eyes at him, mock smirks in a way that serves no purpose except setting his nerves alight. “ _Wouldn’t you like to know_?”  
  
He steps forward because he does, isn’t that the point of asking in first place. He is no longer as good at decoys as he used to be, a man can hardly be a privateer when he has a golden circlet placed upon his head. “ _Yes_ ,” he breathes pleasantly, “I would, so I can trap him beneath the Ravka tunnels and let him wither there.”  
  
She is disconcerted. This he knows because he knows her, back from the days where she jumped into a war out of little faith and long nights spent poring over supply lines of military tacit. “I don’t-”  
  
He laughs a hearty laugh that rips at her strings until she has her eyes narrowed in a mark of defense, all bruised pride and dangling shoulders. He can pinpoint the exact moment she stops glowering deadly intent at him and starts being angry at her own self for being off-guard. His fingers under the glove itch to reach out and smooth the crease between her eyebrows, but he stills in a frame of insanity. “It’s not funny, Nikolai.”  
  
She walks away.  
  
(He will catch on later.)

 

 

**04.**

There are times he has made her cry. Not purposely, of course. Not even in a manner that really counts. Just some tears that swell up in her pretty blue eyes and a sob let lose in an aching throat.  
  
“Alina.” The name scratches as it aches in his throat, but the hand that presses in his own is different, a scar less of being perfect. His eyes fall open even as his world spins in a swirl of darkness.  
  
“You were having a nightmare.” He hears her voice before he sees her, she sounds old in the moment, like someone who has lived lifetimes and is crumbling under the weight of many names she has worn.  
  
This is how he falls, an empire in tow and a boy king on his knees.

“ _Oh_ ,” she is always there to pull him out of them even if they are at each other’s throat and could torch down the bloody council room to ground. “I will not ask you to stay then.”  
  
She settles down in her chair away from whatever his gravity can pull down. “I will stay anyway.”  
  
“Do you expect a vote of thanks?” He asks, because, though a boy, he is a king, _he can_.  
  
“No,” she doesn’t rise to the bait, doesn’t pretend it’s nothing when it is everything that a graveyard of words can complement. “Just don’t,” a naked trace of vulnerability, “don't call me by her name again."  
  
If she lets him he could write bad poetry about the dark rings under her eyes, growing darker still with every tear she holds back. “Even if I do, you can never be her.”  
  
She is stricken, her cheeks flush before she pales visibly in the aftermath of his words that didn’t aim yet drove damage home.

 _“I know.”_ Her voice is missing the usual steel. He’s never known metal, but he has known her, in nights that didn’t end and hearts that didn’t stop.  
  
His fingers tighten around hers in an utter denial of her attempt to draw back her hand. “You are too much of yourself to be anyone else.”  
  
A smile ghosts her lips, her fingers still. “That’s a good thing, right?”  
  
He mimes a gesture of dissolving in consideration of the statement before he finally amends. “At times.”  
  
The smile lasts a tad longer than the effort to keep his eyes open.

 

 

 **05.**  
  
There are times he wants, just wants, frenzied dabblings where he wants for the sake of wanting because even in the face of blood and lives lost, she is more beautiful than any girl he has ever laid his eyes on. He can’t keep her and he can’t quite let her go.  
  
The night before she has to leave for Fjerda, he finds his way to her room without the slightest bearing of an invite. “I can offer you a crown, make you stay here forever.”  
  
She wants it too. He can trace the want in the arch of her spine, the bend of her head, the curve of her palm. It’s a different kind of want, want for power, but its want just the same. “I can see how a crown would suit me better than it suits you.”  
  
Ah, the perils of pursuing people prettier than yourself. “That black heart you possess is an offset to the beauty you claim.”  
  
“Claim?” She widens her eyes in delicate horror. “I’m _damnably handsome_.”  
  
He can’t resist the smirk. “I abhor being misquoted but I will hazard you a reprieve.”  
  
“That makes me tumble in your bed?” The laughter in her eyes makes its way through her mouth, it is softer than she projects herself to be. He doesn’t deign to deny it. “I think not.”  
  
He laughs until he can’t and when finally he stops, he doesn’t think before reaching for her. “I want you to stay.” His words have never amounted to much, but at least, they are honest this time.  
  
A shadow from another lifetime crosses her features even as she remains in the coil of his arms. “The problem with wanting is that it makes us weak.”  
  
He tilts her chin then, forces her to look up even as she struggles to look away. “You are wrong,” he takes off the glove of his free hand, lets her eyes take in the sight of swirling layers of scars, the horrors he has lived, the horrors he has committed, “it makes us strong.”  
  
She rises on her toes with the clear-cut intention to place a swift kiss on his cheek. He stops her short in the middle, manoeuvrers her in his arms until it is his mouth against hers, the press of her body against his, the slip of sanity from his fingers.

Foxes are known for being greedy more than they are known for being clever.  
  
“ _Queen you will be someday_ ,” he tells her, pulling away to drink in the sight of her swollen lips and tangled hair. She is most beautiful when he’s the one denting imperfections in her immaculate appearance.  
  
She looks at him with something akin to pleading and he understands without wanting to, she is a soldier before she will ever be a queen. “But that day is not today.”  
  
He lets her go to Fjerda even when its citizens kill her kind. He’s a king before he’s a boy in love and perhaps that is all love is made of, splinters of bones and girls walking away.

 

 

 **06.**  
  
There are times he loves with a love that is more than love. Days, hours, decades where he can bid his time away in the confines of his mind with her image in his heart and bad poetry in his ink. He finds out he doesn’t necessarily need to when she returns, bloodied and pulled apart but not quite broken. _Never broken_.  
  
“I think,” She begins deliberately, holding out her left hand to see the ruby glint in light, because emeralds live only in past, surviving through ghost girls with their hair too white.  
  
“Please don’t carry on with that statement, you give yourself way too much credit as it is.” Even as he says it, his eyes turn to seek hers from the other side of the bed. “There has to be an end to your everyday toxic dosage of ego.”  
  
She delivers a not so soft punch to his side, waging some inner war to not break into a smile. “I think I could get used to this.”  
  
“Me in your bed?” he shifts to crowd her space. “The marks on my body can attest to that, what are you a wilding.”  
  
She doesn’t pull away like she once would have. “That and the feeling of coming home.”  
  
He feels oddly deflated and elevated at the same time. There was a time he was able to catalogue his feelings under different labels. She came along and disturbed the balance with every fall of her step, every cutting glance from her eyes. “Good, because I am too exhausted to go anywhere else, too exhausted to let you go anywhere else.”  
  
She loses the war, the smile wrenches free on her lips. “I will stay anyway.”  
  
“Quoting yourself?” He guffaws, slapping his hand hard against his mouth as if she’d said something particularly hilarious. “Self-assurance is meant for weak.”  
  
“ _Understatement is overrated_.” She points out slyly and he wants to kiss her in the moment, so he does.  
  
_(This is how it ends, or more precisely, doesn’t because much like need, want is written backwards through time and what can seem to be the end, might not even be the beginning.)_

**Author's Note:**

> I finished reading the trilogy today and yes, I cried over the fall of Darkling. I don't even understand how I ended up writing this, I despised Zoya in the beginning yet here I am: redeemed and weak yet again. I know no self-control but I hope this was as enjoyable to read as it was enjoyable to write. Feedback would be appreciated! :)


End file.
